Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, students protest fee increase

Sunit Dhawan

Rohtak, June 3

Students and the authorities of Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU), Rohtak, are on the warpath over the introduction of certain new courses under the NEP-2020, the fees of which is higher than those of regular courses.

New courses introduced

• The new programmes launched by the MDU under the NEP-2020 include four-year BA (English), BA (Sanskrit), Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), BA (History), BCom, BBA, BSc (Mathematics), BSc (Statistics), BA (Economics), BA (Public Administration), Bachelor in Public Health and BSc (Genetics).
• The fee for these courses is between Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 per year, while the fee for the regular undergraduate courses is between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 per year
• The government is yet to approve the budgetary academic posts for the teaching workload under the NEP courses. Therefore, the university will have to conduct these courses under the self-financing scheme.

On Monday, students prepared pakoras at Gate No.1 of the university to lodge their protest over the alleged fee-hike imposed by the authorities.

The students, led by Deepak Dhankhar, former state president of AAP’s student wing Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), also raised slogans against the MDU administration.

The protesting students said the university administration had imposed up to a five-fold hike in the fees for different courses.

“The open loot in state-run institutions like MDU has made it impossible for students belonging to poor and middle-class families to get admission here. Now, students belonging to rich families can afford studying in the university,” said the protesters.

On the other hand, the university authorities have maintained that the new fee structure is only for certain specialised four-year courses, which are completely different from the regular three-year and five-year integrated postgraduate courses.

“The fees for these four-year courses under the UG Honours and UG Honours with Research categories have been fixed after considering their financial viability, including salaries of faculty members, laboratory and course-related infrastructure requirements and honorarium to external experts required for the courses,” said MDU Vice-Chancellor Rajbir Singh.

He said the university administration understands the financial constraints of the students and is providing a freeship, the details of which are given in the prospectus.

The Vice-Chancellor asserted that the university administration will ensure that no talented student is deprived of higher education due to financial constraints.

However, the protesting students maintained that it was the responsibility of the state government to provide quality education at affordable fees, but the manifold increase in the fees at the MDU indicated that state universities are being run to make money for the government.

CYSS state secretary Aman Aladia and district president Robin Malik warned that if the MDU administration does not withdraw the increased fees, both main gates of the university will be closed. They said a massive protest demonstration will be staged.

Former president of the Hindu College students’ union Sachin Dalal and student leaders Ankit Ahlawat and Lalit Saini said the students would continue to protest until the fee hike is rolled back.

Student leader Nitin Dangi said the fee hike was part of a well-planned conspiracy to privatise the state universities.